


an alumnus of heaven and hell

by dreamweavernyx



Series: the better ground (wakanda modern-day!AU) [3]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Cats, DOG BOOPS, Gen, also dogs, bruce cameo!!, cute animals everywhere, cute cats, just no jellicle cats, literally just a self-indulgent fic of the bp cast with an adorable cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 21:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14222349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: “Aww,” says Shuri, when she drops in one day for a post-lunch coffee. “Is this the infamous lunch-stealing cat you’ve been grumbling about?”“She wouldn’t leave,” Erik says, rolling his eyes as he froths the soy milk for her latte.“Don’t pretend like you would have yelled and chased her out,” she grins. “You big softy. If you hadn’t wanted her to stay you wouldn’t have fed her.”In which Erik adopts a cat (or maybe the cat adopts Erik?) after it just refuses to leave the shop.





	an alumnus of heaven and hell

**Author's Note:**

> Title unashamedly taken from [Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbpP3Sxp-1U), the quirky opening theme of the musical Cats.
> 
> I was _supposed_ to do the t'challa/nakia fic, i swear, but one day I just wondered what might happen if erik had a cat and....this happened. the t'challa fic is happening soon - it's on my mind so much even the characters are talking about it, LOL.

It’s a rainy morning when they first meet.

 

It’s a rainy Thursday morning, just before the crack of dawn, and Erik’s struggling to hold his umbrella with one hand and jam the key into the slightly rusty lock with the other. He has a love-hate relationship with mornings – on one hand, after the morning rush hour the coffeeshop is usually blessedly quiet, all its customers silent zombies hunched over a steaming cup of coffee. On the other hand, if the sun isn’t up, he really doesn’t see why his body has to be.

 

He jerks the key in the lock and the door to the shop finally creaks open. It’s as he’s folding up his umbrella when he sees her. There’s a tiny bundle of black fluff curled up in the corner of the shop doorway, and even as he stares the bundle shifts and a pair of mismatched eyes blink open to stare at him, one bright blue and one tawny golden-green.

 

“…What,” he says, but he only gets a tiny mewl in response. (Which, he supposes, is more or less what he should have expected.)

 

He heads into the shop, letting the door swing closed behind him, and puts the cat out of his mind while he begins his pre-opening routine. _Maybe the cat’s just waiting out the rain_ , he thinks as he sets out the cakes Nakia has left at the back door for him for the day. It’s blueberry muffins today, and he swipes one off the top of the display plate, setting it to the side of the till. (He’ll put the money in for the muffin later – the Good Shit that Nakia bakes is more than worth the price he’s charging for it.)

 

It’s another four hours later, closer to lunch when Erik’s preparing to temporarily close the shop for 15 minutes to run out and buy a sandwich, when he notices the cat is still in the doorway. The rain has long since stopped, a couple of puddles sparkling in the noontime sun all that is left to show for it.

 

“Hey,” he says, squatting down to flick the cat’s ear gently. “It’s not raining anymore.” To accentuate his point, he waves his arm out at the mostly-dry ground, and then up at the sun.

 

The cat gives him an unimpressed look, and yawns wide enough to bare her little teeth at him. She gets up and stretches, before settling back down, and he notices that there is no collar around her neck. Seeing that she’s not going to move anytime soon, and not particularly willing to risk feline anger by chasing her out with a broom, Erik sighs and gets to his feet.

 

“You’re a nuisance,” he informs her, and she yawns at him again. Sighing, he heads out to get his lunch.

 

~

 

The cat is still there when he comes back. The paper bag his sandwich is in crinkles as he unlocks the shop door, and her head jerks up to stare intently at the bag. She gets up and slips into the shop, and Erik stares after her. “Hey, get out of-” He pauses, then: “Never mind.”

 

She follows him to behind the counter, eyes never leaving his sandwich bag, even as he takes it out and prepares to eat it. Erik follows her gaze to the bread he’s holding: it’s a roast chicken sandwich. _Should have expected that_ , he thinks, and sighs.

 

“Here,” he says, pulling off a couple of pieces of the chicken and holding it down to her. She sniffs it curiously, and then suddenly both pieces of chicken are gone and she’s licking at his fingers with a rough tongue.

 

“There’s your freebie,” he tells her, and makes a _shoo_ -ing motion with his hand. “Now, scat.”

 

Strangely enough, the cat does, slinking out of the still-open shop door.

 

~

 

Even more strangely, she’s back the next day. He reluctantly feeds her a third of the smoked salmon from his lunch after she stares at him for ten solid minutes, somehow both baleful and also pleading.

 

By the fifth day in a row, he buys a tin of tuna when he’s out getting lunch. She finishes it before he’s done with the second piece of chocolate biscotti he’s pilfered from Nakia’s daily baking delivery. (Is it technically pilfering if you’re taking it from the stuff you sell?)

 

By the next Sunday, she just doesn’t leave the shop after lunch, and that’s how The Better Ground somehow gains a new mascot.

 

~

 

“Aww,” says Shuri, when she drops in one day for a post-lunch coffee. “Is this the infamous lunch-stealing cat you’ve been grumbling about?”

 

“She wouldn’t leave,” Erik says, rolling his eyes as he froths the soy milk for her latte.

 

“Don’t pretend like you would have yelled and chased her out,” she grins. “You big softy. If you hadn’t wanted her to stay you wouldn’t have fed her.”

 

Erik grunts, but does not contest the point. “She scares away all the customers with dogs,” is what he says instead. “She sees one coming towards the shop and immediately starts shrieking bloody murder.”

 

“ _Mewing_ bloody murder, you mean,” Shuri corrects, and Erik rolls his eyes.

 

“Scat, you menace. Don’t you have a girlfriend to romance?”

 

“Not today, MJ’s got debate practice. I was planning to scheme because _ubhuti_ refuses to get his shit together and ask Nakia out, but now I’m more interested in your cat.”

 

“ _Not_ my cat.”

 

Shuri ignores this admittedly weak rejoinder, and bends down as the cat wanders back in their direction. “Aren’t you cute,” she coos, and when the cat comes within an arm’s-length of her she reaches out and scritches it behind the ears. “Oh, you’re so cute. What’s your name?”

 

The cat mews in response, and Shuri laughs. “Oh, that’s a cute name! I bet Erik didn’t give that name to you, it’s way too cool for that lame-ass to have thought of.”

 

“Hey,” interjects Erik, “this _lame-ass_ makes your coffee, so don’t insult him too much.”

 

Just then, the door opens again, and Peter pokes his head in.

 

“Hey man,” he greets Erik. “Muffins today?”

 

“Better,” says Erik, and points at the display case. “ _Brownies_.”

 

Peter fist-pumps into the air, and then belatedly realises that Shuri is kneeling on the floor with the cat.

 

“…New store cat?” he asks after a moment of bewildered staring.

 

“He is, now,” Shuri promptly replies without looking up. “Erik picked her up from the street and now she’s ours.”

 

Peter stares a little more.

 

“Have you brought her to the vet?” he asks eventually. “If she’s from the street you don’t know what’s in her fur, and I don’t think you’d want much of that near where you’re serving food and drinks.”

 

Truthfully, that had not even occurred to Erik, but Shuri must read it in his face because she jumps up, startling the cat.

 

“Peter!” she says, turning to the boy. “We’ve got a new quest today! We’re going to bring this cat to the vet!”

 

~

 

 _vet sterilised ur cat!!!!,_ Shuri texts him a couple of hours later. _shes also mostly flea-free, u owe me 100 lattes now tq_

 

 _I’ll pay you back in cash, weirdo_ , he replies, and she sends him a “:P” in response. A couple of minutes pass, and then his phone dings again.

 

_fyi!! vet asked us for a name, peter panicked, her name is killmonger now : > don’t kill me it was all his idea ;o;_

 

~

 

“Killmonger” is a mouthful, and also a name that Erik would not be caught dead saying aloud in his shop, where he has a Respectable Adult Job and serves Respectable Adult Customers. He, however, finds that she somehow seems to respond to “Kiki”, and uses that when he needs to call her away from bothering customers.

 

Shuri, however, has no such inhibitions, and gleefully takes to calling the store cat by her full name every time she drops by. Like today.

 

“This is Her Royal Highness Kitty Killmonger, Queen of the Roast, Mother of Panthers,” she proudly tells MJ, who has come into the store for the first time in a week after an intensive multi-day debate competition.

 

MJ snorts. “Peter came up with the name, didn’t he.”

 

“He was on a Game of Thrones kick,” Shuri shrugs. “Also, knowing Erik, he would have just named her something lame.”

 

“She still likes me better,” Erik replies blandly.

 

“Only because you buy her Fancy Feast, you _cheat_! I can’t afford that shit on a student budget.”

 

MJ eyes Kiki with trepidation, and in response Kiki yawns and begins rubbing against her shoe. MJ’s face spasms a little.

 

“MJ’s not a cat person,” Shuri mock-whispers to Erik across the counter.

 

“Cats are demons in deceptive furry little bundles,” MJ hisses in reply, with the long-suffering ease of someone who’s lived this argument a thousand times before. “ _Dogs_ , now those are the bomb.”

 

“You can love _both_! Pet positivity! What’s with this cat-shaming?”

 

“Divorce her,” Erik interjects drolly, and smirks when both MJ and Shuri twitch and frown at him.

 

“You,” sniffs Shuri, “are a disgrace to the institution of True Love.” (Erik can _hear_ those capital letters.)

 

~

 

One morning W’Kabi bounds up to the shop in the morning, familiar black shape trotting along at his heels, and Erik suddenly realises with a sinking feeling that while W’Kabi’s seen Kiki around the shop, he’s never seen her go nuclear on a dog before.

 

“Not the dog!” he wheezes the moment W’Kabi pushes open the door, but it’s too late. Rhino has wound her way around her owner’s ankles and into the shop, as familiar as though it were her home. By the window where she’d been lounging in a patch of morning sunlight, Kiki’s nose twitches and she jumps up, zeroing in on the big black dog with frightening accuracy.

 

And then she yowls.

 

“Christ,” says one of his other regular patrons, a tired-looking academic named Bruce, who sometimes sits by the window so he can gingerly pet Kiki while she sleeps. Clearly, he is regretting this decision today.

 

“Oh, fucknuggets,” Erik swears, and starts towards Kiki, intent on picking her up and taking her out the back door with the emergency can of tuna he keeps behind the till precisely for the purpose of staving off her Dog Moods.

 

Except, Rhino has gotten there first, looming over the tiny black ball of fluff screeching bloody murder at her. She huffs out a warm breath, and Kiki abruptly stops screeching, probably aware that the dog is now uncomfortably closer than she’d expected. Dogs usually get dragged out by apologetic owners as soon as she starts the racket – clearly, this is unexplored territory for Kiki.

 

There is a beat of fragile silence, and then Rhino lowers her head, gently boops Kiki’s nose with her own, and then rasps her tongue over the top of Kiki’s head once. Apparently satisfied, she then flops down just below the windowsill.

 

Kiki’s tail twitches once, twice, and then she scrambles down from the sill to bat at Rhino’s face with her paws.

 

“Um,” says Erik, looking warily at the two animals now at the window, and at the even-more-nervous-looking Bruce, who has frozen with a red pen still in his hand. “Should I go and get her?”

 

“Wait,” W’Kabi says, grinning. “Rhino’s good with cats, they had quite a few at the shelter. She’ll tame your wildcat.”

 

Over at the window, Rhino has rolled over on her side, looking somewhat amused as Kiki kneads at her face and her belly, sniffing all the while. Finally, just when Erik thinks Rhino’s about to snap and bat Kiki away for all the prodding, Kiki settles down and curls up against the dog’s head.

 

Erik blinks. “Well,” he says, eyeing the two animals now napping in the sun. “I’ll be damned.”

 

~

 

Shuri is ecstatic to hear of this new development, and two days later _both_ she and MJ are trailing W’Kabi and Rhino into the store. Rhino heads straight for the window where Kiki, after a loud _mrrow_ in greeting, settles down for some quality sun-napping.

 

“Aww,” Shuri grins, zooming in to take a photo with her phone. “That is the _cutest_. Rhino’s, like, her grandma.”

 

“That’s pretty cute,” MJ concedes. “Your dog is extraordinarily well-behaved.”

 

“Rhino is an _angel_ , she’s gentle to everything, even her chew toys,” Shuri explains. She pauses, and then does a double take. “Michelle Jones! Did you just admit, voluntarily, that a cat was cute? I’m so proud of you!”

 

MJ rolls her eyes.

 

“First, I said the cat _and the dog_ were cute. Second, I never said I thought cats weren’t cute, just that they’re hellspawn too.”

 

“Noooooo! Foiled again.”

 

MJ pets Shuri’s head in a vaguely comforting manner. “You’ll get there. Maybe.”

 

~

 

T’Challa is the last to meet Kiki – even Nakia has run into her while dropping off a delivery of baked goods, and Okoye has come in on a couple of weekends with Rhino in tow. T’Challa, however, has apparently been on a business trip since before Erik first found Kiki.

 

“So,” is the first thing he says when he steps into the shop. “Where’s this legendary murder cat Shuri told me about?”

 

Erik puts his face into his palms. “Kiki is _not_ a murder cat.”

 

As though summoned by the invocation of her name, Kiki scampers over to the counter to sniff the shoes of the new arrival. T’Challa glances down at her – while she has definitely fattened up since Erik started feeding her Fancy Feast, she’s still _tiny_.

 

“She’s cute,” T’Challa says admiringly. “Nakia told me all about meeting her last week, and she was so excited I just had to drop by to see what the fuss was about.”

 

“Wait till you’re trying to teach her not to beg patrons for cake scraps,” Erik grumbles. “It’s not good for her, but will she listen? No.”

 

He pauses, then backtracks. “Wait, Nakia texted you just to tell you about Kiki?”

 

T’Challa looks sheepish. “Uh,” he says, “we talk a lot?”

 

“Oh my _god_ , man, just ask her out. Look, I’ll even lend you Kiki if you want. Nakia loves her already.”

 

“Oh, hey,” a new voice floats in from the door, and Erik belatedly realises Shuri has been standing in the doorway. “Are we setting my brother up now? Good, good. It’s about time.”

 

“Shuri,” T’Challa says, voice flat. “What are you doing here.”

 

“What, can’t a girl visit her favourite brother after his three-week Europe trip?”

 

Shuri ignores T’Challa’s mumbled _I’m your only brother, dammit_ and walks up to the counter. “It’s _my_ turn to scheme,” she informs him, then turns to Erik, holding out a closed fist. “What do you say, partner?”

 

Erik eyes the fist, and then bumps it gently.

 

“T’Challa’s got to get his shit together,” he agrees. “Let’s do this.”

 

From floor level, Kiki meows as though in agreement. T’Challa shoots them all betrayed looks. “Traitors,” he says. “Even your murder cat has turned on me. I should have known.”

 

Almost as if on cue, Kiki hacks up a hairball right onto T’Challa’s shiny leather shoes, and Shuri cackles.

 

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, you should’ve.”

 

 

 

 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> xhosa translations:  
> ubhuti = older brother
> 
> In case y'all were concerned, having a cat in an F&B establishment is okay as long as you [don't let the cat into the food prep area and the litter box is a good distance away](http://shieldsafety.co.uk/cat-cafes-cute-or-contaminated/). Since Erik hardly prepares any food in the shop and Kiki isn't allowed to come into his side of the counter, where all the machines are, I figured Erik wouldn't be running into any health violations for having Kiki underfoot.
> 
> Also, the mutual napping of Rhino and Kiki [looks a little like this](https://youtu.be/aW8YIGbmAVo?t=3m10s). Cats and dogs meeting for the first time could end up a disaster, but it helps if [your dog isn't the rambunctious sort](https://pets.webmd.com/features/when-dog-and-cat-meet#1). Rhino is incredibly patient, so I figured this would probably ease the meeting and not freak out Kiki as much, especially since Labs like Rhino are [famous for being friendly](http://www.petwave.com/Dogs/Breeds/Labrador-Retriever/Personality.aspx).
> 
> Re: the food that Erik feeds/does not feed Kiki: tuna is [okay for cats once in a while](https://blog.petmeds.com/1800petmeds/is-tuna-bad-for-cats/), but please please please [don't try to feed your cat cake](https://www.petconsider.com/can-cats-eat-cake-safely/). It's just not good for them.
> 
> Could you tell that I really want a cat? I've never had a pet in my life before but I'd love a cat.
> 
> I hope y'all liked the Bruce cameo! In my head Bruce is an Extremely Cat Person, and therefore he was always destined to have a spot in this cat!fic.
> 
> Shuri basically texts like I text. Emoji spam, no punctuation, and misspelling things ironically just because.
> 
> If you caught it, Rhino is a shelter dog! I'm considering doing a short piece on her backstory, and how she came to find her forever home with Okoye and W'Kabi. ADOPT, DON'T SHOP, y'all!! The dogs in the shelter deserve loving homes too.


End file.
